Modern communication and data networks, such as Ethernet based networks, are comprised of nodes that transport data frames through the network. The nodes may include routers, switches, and/or bridges that transport the data frames through the network. Data frames may be delivered through the network as a multicast or unicast transmission. The multicast feature allows a single packet data to be copied and transmitted from a single multicast source node to multiple receiver nodes. Transmitting data using multicast flows may reduce the amount of traffic required to distribute data to many different receiver nodes.
Multicast flows may be delivered using different routing methods, such as head-end replication, source specific tree, or shared tree. More specifically, multicast flows may use multicast trees to forward data frames to different receiver nodes throughout the network. However, each network design generally supports only one type of routing method. For example, a Virtual Private LAN Service (VPLS) network may use head-end replication, a Shortest Path Bridge (SPB) network may use source specific trees, and a Transparent Interconnection of Lots of Links (TRILL) network may use shared trees. As a result, networks are limited to employing only one routing method, which causes inefficient use of bandwidth and consumption of resources required to manage multicast trees at a node.
Network designs may become more efficient by expanding the set of multicast routing methods supported in a network. Multicast transmission may be optimized while reducing the multicast state information through the utilization of multiple routing methods in a network. For example, by adding source specific trees to VPLS or creating a shared tree rooted at each multicast source node in TRILL, multicast traffic may be effectively distributed through a network. However, control mechanism needs to exist to support multiple routing methods simultaneously and appropriately apply the routing methods to different multicast flows. Unfortunately, no such control mechanism has been previously created for networks that support multicast traffic.